Off the Media: Media Arrrgh!

Infrequent and horribly irregular musings about WNYC radio's "On the Media."

This week, the show explores whether photographers are within their ethical rights to shoot subjects, especially for magazine covers, in a way that serves to influence the perceptions of the audience seeing them. Making Ann Coulter look longer and leggier with use of a wide-angle lens shot from below, shooting someone with certain kinds of lighting or camera filters to make them look darker or more evil, and so on.

One of the reasons photos get so much notice is because the manipulations are so much easier to see, and even feel at a visceral level than in other media. Any distortions or filters can even be quantified (this kind of fisheye lens, that gradient of filter...), while the filters through which we record and write are less obvious if just as important.

My Fulbright project in Japan in the early '90s was about Japanese vs. American coverage of specific news events. Neither side saw its coverage as biased, and the journalists for top-notch organizations on both sides worked very hard to be objective and fair. But they also were coming at the stories -- whether about weighty business and policy issues or more frothy sports matter -- from their own points of view, often culture-bound and even politically influenced. Many seemed to not realize they were coming at a story from a specific angle that was not the only possible angle, did not see that their points of view colored the ways they wrote and talked, that they were strongly steered by sources, and by the editors they filed to who came with their own preconceptions. The classic example of distortion on TV is the protests in Iran after hostages were taken during the Carter administration. The cameraman used a tight shot to make it look as if Tehran was in full protest mode; in fact, a group of about 300 people were dwarfed in a largely empty plaza.

So, while it's reasonable to ask whether photojournalists have an obligation to be more fair. But the question is equally valid for all forms of journalism. There is really no such thing as objectivity. Every time a choice is made about how to portray something -- point a camera, frame a subject, take a quote, ask a question -- the person committing the act of journalism is injecting themselves into the process.

Oh, and why the "arrgh" in the headline? OTM brings on one of their faves, Jeff Jarvis, to talk about whether media "is" or "are" -- Jarvis appears to be talking about platforms, and how there's no longer a distinction between the different forms of media, since anyone can now contribute in multiple ways (photos, text, audio, video). Show hosts Garfield and Gladstone, though, are talking about a multiplicity of voices, and agree, as Garfield says, that it's "are," which sounds when he says it like a pirate exclaiming.

Off the Media: China, Russia and ... West Virginia?

I used to complain on occasion that NPR's On the Media was too foreign, too fascinated with news from overseas. I do enjoy the coverage from overseas, but how much is too much? I enjoyed a lot of the coverage of the from-Russia show, and this week's from China. Co-host Brooke Gladstone has also spent a week in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Call me -- the founding international editor of ABCNEWS.com -- parochial, but I find it a bit laborious, or at least limiting, to listen to a whole show in a week from one country. Inevitably, a lot of the coverage will repeat truisms we've read elsewhere, and the mind will wander.

Why not some other special, themed weeks. OK, they did do "books" recently. How about, though, spending a week somewhere in the U.S. where the media landscape is changing? How about, say, spend a week in West Virginia and figure out what it is about the news coverage there that convinced voters Obama is a Muslim. What can we see about local TV and newspapers that tell us something about the U.S. trends, in general. And a parochial question: How are coal miners consuming the media and news? Are they more connected than they've been in previous generations, networking socially via the Web with like-minded folks?

Slightly drunken rantings here -- yes, I admit it, I had a little to much port this Friday evening, while watching Disney Channel's "Camp Rock" with my kids -- but I'm now listening to the On the Media podcast, and found myself back on this ground.

Off the Media: Ethics, Anyone?

Last post, I wrote about journalistic ethics -- and how the noted journalist Brian Storm thinks that having ethics doesn’t equate objectivity and that journalists should take sides.

Now, comes On the Media, raising the question of whether a journalist “above all else” is supposed to be a neutral observer. No, says Storm, while OTM co-host Bob Garfield seems to take it for granted. Meaning, make the “objective” more important than the human.

I’ve already said there’s no such thing as being objective -- we’re all culture- and situation- and perspective-bound. Should be an good discussion.

T-Mobile Can Live: A Good Way to Handle Customers

Bob Garfield's "Comcast Must Die" got me thinking about his assertion – repeated to me today at the Networked Journalism summit – that if someone decided to go high-end with telecom service, be the "Nordstrom," they'd have a wide-open field.

I recently added a couple of lines to my T-Mobile cellphone service, got two more handsets, and replaced my old HP Ipaq with their high-end T-Mobile Wing device. I even signed onto a new contract – something I dread, having once lost $170 to cancel another service -- at a higher price than my previous contract-less service. There are various reasons I stay with T-Mobile (international quad-band phones, ability to include Hot Spots, contract length, etc), but one I find persuasive is I end up not hating the company every month. This is unlike other services I've had over the years, from about all the major carriers.

The pleasantness happened not only when I was calling to sign up, but even after they've gotten me locked into a yearlong contract (and it is a year long, not two!). Whenever I've called, T-Mobile people have stayed on the line with me through multiple reboots and software installations, called back as they promised, even offered an automated call-back service (that works!) when hold time is more than two minutes. When I have trouble with the Wing, they get an expert, escalate to a bigger expert if need-be, talk me through installs and uninstalls, tell me what T-Mobile dealer to go to near me. When I suggested someone stay on the line with me so I wouldn't get bounced among departments, he agreed and did so. When I told one helpful woman she was spending a long time and asked whether it wouldn't look bad on her record for spending so long – maybe 45 minutes – with one customer, she said it averaged out at the end of the day. Someone else found a way to give me the same data service I had ordered for $10 less per month. That paid for about half the Wing.

Sure, sometimes the people don't know as much as I think they should, and I suppose I'm more of a power user than they're used to, because I ask a lot of questions that send them to checking documentation. Regardless of how nice they are, it's infuriating that I've had to spend hours just to learn how to use a device I've paid beaucoup bucks for. But the people on the line are invariably pleasant and seem to want to help, no matter how long it takes. That's worth a lot to me, and has kept me with them, when I could have easily switched.

Netj tag.

Off the Media: Business Sense

I've complained in the past that NPR's "On the Media" doesn’t cover business enough and gets too wrapped up in a few foreign regions that don't warrant that much attention. Last week, the show answered both issues with a strong showing on Murdoch-WSJ, the Redstones' feud, Google's play to make cellphone bandwidth more freely usable (says NYU's Siva Vaidhynathan, deftly: "Google’s action in this auction has made Americans all over the place realize that we have a ridiculous and anti-competitive system, and that we could have a much more efficient, effective and creative market place.") and the socio-economics of Facebook (college-educated biz people) vs. MySpace (anti-societal dropouts).

From the show, I leaned in the Murdoch story that The New York Post used to be "one of the most liberal newspapers in America ." Imagine that! And a piece on the NFL restricting the amount of material media outlets can use from press conferences and what-not seems to put the NFL's desire for control – trying to drive people to its properties – ahead of the benefits it would get from sharing. A very Web 1.0 strategy. Not to mention that football is something of a public trust, not just any business. Certainly, a further effect of businesses doing their own media, going "direct to consumer," rather than having the media mediate.

Interestingly, it was a week without co-host Bob Garfield, who's steeped in the business of media at his day job as an Ad Age columnist and would be great to give the show more on this business as it goes through one of the greatest distruptions in business history.

This week, Garfield's fellow host Brooke Gladstone got all William Safire on us, with a lead story exploring the phrase "off the table." (C'mon , guys, in a week with reports from Veronis Suhler, eMarketer and others about the state of media, is that really the best we can do in observing what's new in American media?) They managed to get the New York Times' perfume write back, quite a feat that, to talk about a possible Anderson Cooper' scent. (Did they have to, though, talk about a possible Wolf Blitzer cologne, a "soothing peppermint distillation?" And Bill O'Reilly. Something with "a cream from the anal gland from a species of bat." Eesh..

Next week -- well, tomorrow, really -- here's hoping OTM explores the Picasso comic book controversy , where a store owner's in hot water for letting a boy have a comic book that showed Picasso as he sometimes used to paint: in the nude.